Using Philosophical and Economic analysis to consider big questions, world issues and matters of everyday life!

Tuesday, 28 July 2015

Career & Maternity: When The Irresistible Force Meets The Immovable Object

On
Thursday in this
Blog post I set about dispelling one or two myths about gender pay
differences. It was a popular blog post, generating about seven times as many
hits as an average blog post of mine, but it did come with a bit of heat as
well as light, mainly to do with the issue regarding how prospective employers may
sometimes discriminate against women in their thirties to avoid taking on someone
who might soon become pregnant and need maternity leave.

I
explained in a subsequent debate that while it is illogical for employers to
discriminate due to gender, there are conditions under which they might be
driven to discriminate due to maternity. A critic thought that inconsistent,
but alas, there is no inconsistency - this only goes to show a misunderstanding
of the important difference between gender discrimination and maternity
discrimination. Fairly obviously it is not in the interests of an employer to
discriminate based on things like gender, skin colour, sexuality, and so forth,
but it can be in their interests to discriminate when other factors, like
maternity, come into it.

To give
you an illustration that makes the point even clearer - an employer might not
be discriminatory at all when it comes to young black men but he might choose
not to employ a particular young black man because he happened to have four
different children by four different women. The same is true in the case of women
- an employer may not have any reason to be biased against women in general,
but he may have a reason to be biased against women with a high probability of
being pregnant soon.

The
difference between the first case and the second is that in the case of the
black man he could have changed the fact that he was irresponsible enough to
father four kids by four different women, whereas a woman who soon wants to be
a parent can't change the fact that biological evolution has conditioned that
only women have babies.

So, the
upshot is this; in life we have this issue to contend with - the immovable
force of female biology coming up against the irresistible force of businesses
needing to make decisions that are best for their firm's survival, and that in
life this sometimes causes a conflict of interest. Despite this, one of the key
basics of economics is that sometimes problems that look like they need
solutions are in fact non-problems that just describe different people wanting
different things or making different life decisions.

What I really
want to get across here is that I'm always happy to hear people's views on
problems in society, and I am open to hearing solutions - but a lot of the time
people want to tell us problems and not attempt to offer solutions. Sometimes
it's clear to me that they are non-problems, sometimes they are small problems
with no realistic solutions, and sometimes there may well be solutions to make
things better - but either way, my interest in these so-called problems
dwindles if no one wants to talk about solutions.

Despite
some impassioned reactions to my blog, anyone who thinks the maternity pay
gap/discrimination situation is a problem that needs changing must at the very
least tell us how they think things should be changed, and explain why it's
practical - not just complain about the situation with no recourse to resolve
it. It's no use saying things are wrong without first establishing that there
are things that can be done that actually will help the situation without
harming others, and also that there are actually realistic solutions to any
problems identified.

The
'without harming others' point is so essential and so often missed - you cannot
artificially put things in place to protect one group in the employment market
without artificially hindering another group at the same time. For example, there is another group in particular that
gets penalised when would-be mothers get artificially protected - that group is
the women that don't want any children but may miss out through discrimination
to account for all the women that do. As things stand if you're a 33 year old
woman that doesn't want kids, you are highly unlikely to require a career
break, which means there's no reason for you to be discriminated against. But
your prospective employer won't know that, so he or she is likely to believe
you have a high probability of being a mother, and may act accordingly.

What's
the solution then? The truth is, I don't think there is one (except through
some kind of binding contract - of which more in a moment), and I've not heard any
single detractor suggest a solution, they've been too busy trying to convince me
that there is a problem but offering nothing further.

Control is beyond your control

There are two main reasons that an economy is impossible to command efficiently
from on high. The first reason is that the entire nexus of economic activity is
just too complex and too diverse for any politician to get a handle on. The
second reason is that human beings, even when acting rationally, are still very
difficult to map to a final theory of predictable behaviour. Without having
full knowledge of the entirety of society and every detail, even a world in
which every human acted rationally for the majority of the time would still
leave us unable to arrive at a gland slam model on which to base any kind of
sovereignty.

Humans are often selfish but they will also act selflessly, particularly
when there are selfish gains, but also for sporadic acts of kindness at a cost
to themselves. They often have strong moral convictions in one area of life (it
is wrong to avoid taxes) but relax their moral convictions in other areas of
life (like being willing to cheat on a partner). They will often behave one way
when caught up in a group collective, but depart considerably from such
behaviour at an individual or familial level. They will be quite prudent in
spending money on things they need, but in times when status-mongering or
social gain is in front of them they will spend quite recklessly. The upshot
is, let humans loose in society and they become a mess of contradictions and
opposites.

One relatively small element of this complex society is each individual
woman's life choices. Some women will choose an uninterrupted career over
motherhood; some will choose motherhood over any kind of career; some will
choose motherhood and an interrupted career; and even on top of
well-intentioned plans some women will fall pregnant unexpectedly when they didn't
plan to, whereas others will plan to fall pregnant and find it never happens.

Society isn't a giant piece of clay that can be moulded exactly as a
potter wants it to be - it is a multi-faceted network of activity in which
millions of people, including business owners (who themselves have a family and
staff to think about), have to make local decisions most conducive to their own
survival and well-being.

Consequently, then, legislation that seeks to protect some citizens in the
free market against the free choices of other citizens in the free market only
usually occurs by harming the latter group - most of whom are individuals
trying to make the decisions they can to secure the solvency of their business
and the jobs of that business's employees.

Although
all I've said favours the contrary to what I'm now going to say, if you have
got this far and you still are insisting that some kind of solution be put in
place, then all I can say is, when you get a situation like this, where there is a clear
distinction between maternity discrimination and gender discrimination, the
most obvious solution is some kind of binding contract. After all, let's not
forget, an agreement between an employer and an employee is already a binding
contract, so if you really want to ensure the artificial protection of one
group in society then a binding contract could be the only answer that can be
entertained, short of becoming a nation that can arrest people for thought
crimes.

The
advantage of a contract is most conferred on all the women who don't want kids
but who may be treated as they do, but it would also bring transparency to
thousands of employment contacts that looked to protect women who didn't yet
want kinds and employers who feared they might. If you think it's a problem
that requires an interventionist solution (and personally I don't) then that
might be your best solution. And if it isn't
you're perfectly welcome to comment below and suggest your own solution. But
for goodness' sake, please do give up this habit of telling us all about the
problems without first working out the following:

A)
Whether they are actually problems or just facts about differences in life.

B)
Whether, if they are actually problems, they are problems that can be solved
without making the situation worse, or another group equally worse off.

C)
What, if they are actually problems that can be solved without making the
situation worse, or making another group equally worse off, you are proposing
as a solution.

Then,
and only then, does this become a proper debate that sheds light instead of
heat.

About Me

This is the Blog of James Knight - a keen philosophical commentator on many subjects.
My primary areas of interest are: philosophy, economics, politics, mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, theology, psychology, history, the arts and social commentary.
I also contribute articles to the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economics Affairs.
Hope you enjoy this blog! Always happy to hear from old friends and new!
Email:j.knight423@btinternet.com